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UltraViolet Digital Movie Locker is Shutting Down (theverge.com)

Posted by msmash on from the for-the-record dept.

UltraViolet, one of the entertainment industry's first attempts at creating a comprehensive digital locker service, is shutting down on July 31st. Users should link their libraries to the service of at least one retailer which can then be used to access their films and TV shows after the shutdown. From a report: UltraViolet's days were numbered ever since Disney, the only major Hollywood studio not to join, launched its expanded Movies Anywhere locker service in 2017. Not only did it offer broad studio support, but it could also be connected to major digital retailers like iTunes, Amazon, and Google Play, unlike UltraViolet. Additional resources: How to safeguard your UltraViolet library.

19 of 66 comments (clear)

  1. How to safeguard by Alypius · · Score: 4, Informative

    The best way to safeguard your library is to rip the disc. This is just the latest service to go under or change their TOS.

    1. Re:How to safeguard by dgatwood · · Score: 3, Informative

      I have the discs, my Ultraviolet codes came with the physical disc and just gave me a nice way to access the content while traveling on a business trip if I found myself bored and with some time to kill.

      The problem is, IIRC, they charged a premium for the versions with the codes, so a lot of people got suckered out of real money for something that is now useless. I'm betting the class-action lawyers are already salivating.

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

    2. Re:How to safeguard by 91degrees · · Score: 2

      True. Although a lot of people don't have DVD drives any more. And very few people have ever had blu-ray drives.

      Also the space taken up by movies, assuming you want no further degradation, is still non-trivial. Especially for blu-rays.

  2. Such is the fate of all DRM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Pirates win again!

    1. Re:Such is the fate of all DRM by rlitman · · Score: 2

      Also the eventual fate of any cloud service that is ostensibly free, or paid for up front, relying on future sales, without any recurring subscription charges to support its long term maintenance.

  3. Ulraviolet never had a day by Austerity+Empowers · · Score: 2

    Ultraviolet's days were numbered before it was ever released. It was a vaguely mediocre idea, completely ignorant of the reality of the internet that makes the service completely worthless, foisted upon the population by some of the upper echelon in the pantheon of Really Awful People.

    Good riddance, and may all their future endeavors end as this did.

  4. Moral of the Story by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Never trust the cloud.

  5. Sadness by duke_cheetah2003 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    UV was a fantastic idea. It's a shame one studio can cause it's undoing.

    This is not going to create any confidence in consumers interested in buying digital goods like music, movies, shows, etc.

    If they're gunna keep pulling the rug out from under the consumer, you can bet nothing like this service will ever find success. You can only burn people so many times before they go 'no thanks, been there done that. got nothing to show for it.'

    1. Re:Sadness by kbonin · · Score: 3, Informative

      I suspect the real reason for its failure is more than just Disney not playing along, its more likely that most studios are now preparing their own walled gardens and are allowing any contracts that require them to play nice just expire. Studios want physical media to die so they can charge for their own streaming, and most consumers don't mind getting that 5 Mbps stream instead of 24 Mbps for Blue-ray or 25 instead of 128 Mbps for 4k UHD. Not to mention the data cap/NN elephant. As always, consumers lose, and arrgghh for the win!

    2. Re:Sadness by Yaztromo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Ultraviolet reinforced the concept that if you bought a license for a show or movie, that license was universal and entitled you to stream it from anywhere

      The idea may have been good, but the implementation -- particularly outside the US -- sucked badly. Their software support to actually watch films was terrible, and by relying on third-parties to actually host the content, you were at their whim if they decided to stop making certain pieces of media available for download and/or streaming.

      So it wasn't "one studio". UltraViolet had a myriad of issues that made it difficult to watch your content, severely degraded the audio and video of your content (in certain situations), and which made it difficult to watch your content on a variety of devices, and where content my simply disappear at any time.

      As a consumer, it always cheesed me off if I bought a BluRay and found it had an UltraViolet code in it, as the experience was uniformly terrible. I've always had a much easier time with iTunes codes -- they work, are well supported, Apple always has the content, I can stream in HD even a year or two after entering the code, and the experience is always uniformly positive.

      (Note that as I only get codes for each via physical media purchases, I am able to rip the content myself. At home I typically use the physical media for viewing, but if I want something on the road on my iPad or laptop, while I could transfer a copy I've ripped to the device in question it's always easier to just download or stream it from iTunes. That was never the case with UltraViolet).

      Yaz

    3. Re:Sadness by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 2

      As a consumer, it always cheesed me off if I bought a BluRay and found it had an UltraViolet code in it, as the experience was uniformly terrible. I've always had a much easier time with iTunes codes -- they work, are well supported, Apple always has the content, I can stream in HD even a year or two after entering the code, and the experience is always uniformly positive.

      Which was why - at least on Amazon - I found that lots of discs which included UV codes were "accidentally" mis-advertised as including iTunes codes instead. Companies like Funimation repeatedly made this same "mistake" - I'm not sure if they ever corrected it, even after getting called on it.

      I don't like DRM; but at least Apple has made it reasonably transparent to the end user.

      --
      #DeleteChrome
  6. Physical Media FTW! by imperious_rex · · Score: 5, Insightful

    THIS is why I always prefer physical media. When a movie or music album is literally in one's hands, they cannot take it away from you. Plus physical media can be easily loaned and borrowed between friends. When your media library is "in the cloud" on somebody's server, you don't really own the media. It's just available for you to lease or check out, not to own forever or to pass on to somebody else. When that service becomes defunct, so does your media library. Ooops! Physical media isn't without its problems (bit rot over time, physical damage, etc.), but I put more trust in a disc in my hand than in an account that could be shut down at any time.

    1. Re:Physical Media FTW! by FangVT · · Score: 2

      I have physical discs of 3D movies. I can no longer buy a new TV that will show them in 3D. Nothing is safe.

      --
      A Call for Open Standards
    2. Re:Physical Media FTW! by Yaztromo · · Score: 3, Informative

      FWIW, while you can't really buy a new 3D capable TV, the PlayStation VR can be bought new and can still display 3D movies.

      It's a different experience -- but you get a much bigger virtual TV size (the size is selectable, but at the largest size is like being at a movie theatre). Plus it will output the 3D signal to a 3D TV, and can automatically output a 2D image to a 2D TV while the VR headset is in use.

      That may or may not be your cup of tea, but it is something you can buy today that will play and display 3D BluRay discs.

      Yaz

  7. Do you even know what it did? by Solandri · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Ultraviolet reinforced the concept that if you bought a license for a show or movie, that license was universal and entitled you to stream it from anywhere So if you bought a movie on Fandango, you could use that license to view it from Vudu, and vice versa. No more having to dig through a half dozen streaming services trying to figure out which one you used to buy a particular movie. If you paid for the license, you could stream it from any of them (who supported Ultraviolet).

    IMHO, a service like this should be a legal requirement for anything that's sold as a license instead of a physical product. It reinforces the concept that the digital licenses you buy belong to you, not to the service which happened to sell it to you.

    1. Re:Do you even know what it did? by trawg · · Score: 2

      If you paid for the license, you could stream it from any of them (who supported Ultraviolet).

      From a very quick read of the shutdown announcement that sounds it sounds like they're trying to offer some continuitiy like that: "... in the majority of cases, your movies and TV shows will remain accessible at previously-linked retailers."

      Of course that doesn't help you if the retailer decides to pull the plug (which seems like the inevitable fate of all such services).

    2. Re:Do you even know what it did? by Yaztromo · · Score: 2

      Ultraviolet reinforced the concept that if you bought a license for a show or movie, that license was universal and entitled you to stream it from anywhere

      ...for values of from anywhere that equal "within the United States".

      Very, very, very few services ever worked with UltraViolet outside the US, and many of those who did had limited libraries of content. And even fewer of those ever supported any sort of set-top streaming -- I have yet to find one that works in Canada for a set-top box, for example.

      I only buy movies on physical media (usually BluRay/DVD combo packs), and rip the DVDs to my media server for easy streaming. I've had a few UltraViolet codes, but trying to actually watch an UltraViolet movie has always been a major PITA. A number of the ones I have became unavailable for download without any prior notice, and if I didn't already have them downloaded on a specific device, I could only ever get a license to stream them in standard definition.

      So screw UltraViolet. Outside the US it had poor support, few providers, few/no apps for streaming devices, took movies you had purchased offline for download leaving only SD quality -- and yet even with all of this terrible support they still pushed it to BluRay/DVD buyers (in Canada at least).

      Every BluRay/DVD that came with an iTunes code, on the other hand, has worked just fine and continues to be available for both download and streaming, without any forced quality degradation. Hopefully with UltraViolet closing down more BluRays will come with iTunes codes instead.

      Yaz

  8. Keep your own content and files! by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Stop using 'The Cloud', it's stupid.

  9. If you don't have a DRM-free copy by Casandro · · Score: 3, Informative

    You might as well have no copy at all. Fortunately DVDs and BluRays are easy to rip. Funny enough lots of people seem to share that opinion if you look at sales figures which go up once simple ways to rip became available.